Friday, December 25, 2009

Taliban release video of captured US Soldier missing since June. Stupid shit rednecks like Dick Cheney, who like to think of the war in Afghanistan as just another episode of Jack Bauer in 24 should realize that when the US tortures people they put American soldiers at grave risk of the same thing happening to them should the shoe end up on the other foot.

"The video, which has an English-language narration in parts, also shows images of prisoners in U.S. custody being abused. The speaker says he did not suffer such ill treatment."

But he probably will....

How the hell can America act outraged. "To release this video on Christmas Day is an affront to the deeply concerned family and friends of Bowe Bergdahl, demonstrating contempt for religious traditions and the teachings of Islam." says General so in so. Meanwhile here in Texas us Christians think it's god's will to apply electrical current to your balls if you end up being a freaking Muslim.

These draft dogging malingering assholes like Cheney, Bush and Rumsfeld aren't going to be the ones jumping into a foxhole in a some faraway third world country. They'll be eating fancy meals and smoking big cigars and joking about how fucking tough they are when it comes to blowing people up and torturing prisoners who end up in our custody.

Thursday, December 24, 2009

A quote from David Cole's Huffington Post mention and New York Review of books

"Thursday morning--Christmas Eve, that is, just after 7 a.m.--the United States Senate did something it's never done and passed a bill that aims for broad reforms of America's private health-insurers (it also delivers them 30 million new customers over the next decade, a bone of contention on the left). Potential snags exist, to be sure, but in all likelihood Barack Obama will become the first president, out of eight who've tried, to pass large-scale health reform. His presidency is either one-quarter or one-eighth over. Let us say, for argument's sake (because the economy is starting to turn around; and because of the advantages of incumbency), that it is the latter. What have we learned in this first year that might tell us something about the next seven?

Three things, I think. The first is that he's not the liberal tiger some people assumed or hoped he would be. Put aside the contingent of Americans who consider him a Communist. The rest of us should by now, I think, see him as the center-left politician he is, a person whose deepest intellectual conviction is to look skeptically upon conviction. He has, by the way, never said otherwise. If you happened to read The Audacity of Hope, this is the person you encountered."

Monday, December 21, 2009

Or so said you know who. Has every fucking progressive in the country turned into a freaking drama queen? Okay there’s no public option. Get over it. There’s a ton of good stuff in this bill and it certainly a foundation on which we can build. Look at it as a patient’s bill of rights on steroids if nothing else. The paint isn't even dry on this baby and your having a cow. Here are some of the good things in the health care bills:

Extend health insurance coverage to 31 million more Americans, including 14 million lower-income, working people through Medicaid.

Prohibit insurance company discrimination based on gender or pre-existing condition and make sure you can't lose your insurance when you get sick.

End the upward, unsustainable increases in insurance premium.

Increase funding for community health centers in 10,000 communities across the country, enhancing primary care for more than 25 million people who have traditionally been uninsured or under insured.

Close the prescription drug dough nut hole for seniors.

Require insurance companies to spend at least 85% of their income on patient care, not executive pay or profits.

Cut the federal deficit by $132 billion, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

After more than 30 years of the corporations taking over the government, a fact that many of you overlooked for decades when you failed to even show up to vote, did you think these bastards would somehow disappear overnight because you actually put down the pot pipe and clicked your heals together when you finally sobered up enough to realize the alarm bells were ringing.

Democrats are generally pussies. Yes you heard me right we're a bunch of sniveling crybabies in never fucking never land half the time. I’m sick of John Avavosis over at America Blog and even the female version of Governator Swartzenager, the Queen Arianna herself at Huffington Post bashing Obama every time he sneezes. Make like Medicare Plan D and please close your donut holes a minute!

You apparently have the attention span of a 2nd year college student after he has been sucking on a bong all day. It has been just a year ago when Obama inherited the piece of shit leftovers of Bush and his band of fucking criminals. W and his cronies spent years robbing the fucking treasury to finance their unlawful wars, while all the time enriching their personal blind trusted companies. They greased the palms of their big business buddies and the asses of the middle class. The ran the country into the fucking ground so that it’s a wonder it still functions at all.

Yes, maybe the fountain of idealism that rode in with our current President was turn on full blast. It was sure to make for a terrible bummer of a hangover when we had to come back to earth. Huffington and especially the nitwits over at America Blog wouldn’t of done much better if they, through some miracle of science and religion, has suddenly been put into Obama’s shinny shoes.

I still believe that Barack Obama is an honorable and intelligent man who has done one hell of a lot of good things to improve the situation is a relatively short period of time. Given the total crapper that the right has attempted to turn this country into for the middle class, and it didn't start with the Bush's either. Saint Ronald Reagan probably was the biggest asshole of all. Problem was he was sort of a likable jerk.

If you believe that Obama hasn’t been an effective and viable President for progressive and liberal ideas your not paying attention again. I could go into a fucking litany here about what is right about the last year. But all you assholes out there are interested in is your little petty fucking agendas or parroting the same bullshit in your echo chamber then to take a minute to look at the big picture. Yes, we should keep the Presidents feet to the fire. But the constant whining is becoming counterproductive. Most importantly you should be blaming the people who are really responsible, the Republicans and a few assholes D's and one asshole I in the Congress named Joe "the weasel" Lieberman. Fitting that his name starts with LIE. It’s not Obama’s fault Lieberman was born for Christ sake.

Problem with the left sometimes is they get all hung up in their limited little fucking worlds. It’s all about their particular area of special interest. You know who you are. If your issue isn’t getting the attention you think it deserves your ready to throw the baby out with the bath water. Be careful you don't windup poisoning the well in the process.

Thursday, December 10, 2009

Many knee jerk liberals awoke this morning with a nagging feeling that they have been sold down the river with the apparent demise of the so-called public option. But most likely they are really only suffering from a severe case of tunnel vision when you look at what the overall proposed and significant reforms might turn out to be by the time the bill hits the President’s desk.

Both Nate Silver at FiveThirtyEight and Chris Bowers over at Open Left, well respected progressive types, express similar themes, that liberals would be wrong to call the direction and scope of health care reform, as now proposed, anything other than significant should it become law. Now take a deep breath and exhale then repeat.

Wednesday, December 09, 2009

Darcy Burner, the twice beaten Democratic Candidate from WA 8th District and the loopy lefty darling of all neo progressives in ear shot nearly had a cow yesterday when reports emerged from the Senate that it maybe willing to drop or weaken the public option in a scheme allowing 55 to 64 year olds to instead buy into Medicare.

Burner’s rant on Huffington Post yesterday claims that the two big issues of the healthcare reform debate are: “A whole bunch of people don't have insurance, and can't therefore get the range of medical services they need; and we spend way too much, twice as much as most of the rest of the industrialized world, for healthcare that's not as good as what they get.” Sounds to me like something a liberal would parrot at a cocktail party in Bellevue.

Then somehow she claims that the extension of Medicare to the 55 and over crowd in exchange for dumping or the drowning in the bathtub of the public option will likely make cost go up rather then down. Although I’m certainly no expert, I don’t see how she can substantiates that conclusion.

Experts have argued that Medicare administrative costs are lower then for private insurance when it comes to delivering treatment. Given that premise is true, wouldn’t that mean that if millions were allowed to buy in to Medicare, meaning they have to pay something too, and the cost of the government administration is lower then for private insurance companies. Wouldn’t the program lower the overall cost of the actual delivery of treatment to those patients? Plus a government run program has a better chance of controlling cost because it's the fucking government with big government clout, standard setting, uniformity and reach.

Sometimes I think the left is as hysterical as the right when it comes to their pet issues. The public option has become the litmus test for how progressive you are, or aren’t, on health care reform. Many couldn't tell a public option from a hole in the ground, but it’s something to talk about that sounds good when all out at the sushi wine bar, I guess. You’d think they were going to remove your appendix without anesthetics if you even dare mention that perhaps the public option has become so watered down that it’s time to start looking at other proposals. Hell, I was as dingy as Darcy about the public option last summer, but this latest fish we may not want to throw back.

For god sake Doctor Governor Howard Dean is the one who supposedly came up with this idea of Medicare at 55. Burner acts like it was a proposal by the insurance lobby. Dean understands that it has the potential to be a winner with voters immediately. Because it would probably kick in immediately and be a tangible thing that everyone understands as an improvement to the healthcare system. The damn public option under the most favorable Democratic proposal doesn’t start till 2014, and what the fuck will it look like given the sandbagging it's experiencing in the Senate at this very moment. The new Medicare proposal is giving millions of people the option to participate in a government run healthcare plan, and it could add needed political legitimacy for the what's in it for me crowd out there in the hinterlands, and the program is all ready up and freaking running.

There’s a number of other good reasons to seriously look at this proposal that I don’t have room to mention here.

Burner then goes on a tirade about how all this somehow will mean a reduction in preventive care to treat her yet undiagnosed diabetes. Connecting the non existent dots that lowering the age for eligibility to buy in to Medicare will, in Burner mind, make doctors less likely to order early preventative care testing for your hereditarily related diseases. I’d argue that the practice of proper preventative care incentives and allowing 55 year olds to have Medicare are two different aspects of the overall health reform bill. Burner talks about early testing and personal awareness of the need for exercise becoming somehow unavailable if the proposal passes. Isn’t exercise always been a personal lifestyle choice anyway? Do you need a doctor to tell you that you need to exercise to make it happen? Besides I think the bill as it now stands addresses these issues of promoting a healthy lifestyles and cost cutting with the promotion of early testing anyway.

Here my health reform advise for you everyone. Don’t smoke; exercise, and don’t eat so much that you become a fat ass. If you follow these three easy steps you will lower your health care costs and probably live a long a productive life. Otherwise not.

Darcy then makes the argument that the insurance companies will dump patients when they reach 55 years of age and get sick. These people will then become the wards of Medicare and it will be the responsibility of the “taxpayers to cover the cost”. If I remember correctly both current bills in the Congress provide protection against such antics by the health insurance companies. I think Darcy Burner could be dead wrong on this one. For the sake of reason, let’s at least let the proposal see the light of day before we kill it in the crib. If it will get the 60 votes needed to pass the legislation then it’s worth consideration.

This maybe the trade off for the public option we can live with.

Update: Here's more via Crooks and Liars on the details of the proposed changes to the Senate health-care bill. Howard Dean says, ""I think this is still real reform," but hedges his complete approval until he can see the details of the final proposal, especially on just who gets to buy into Medicare. I believe the CBO is in the process of "scoring" the bill to see what the projected costs would be. So stay tuned.

Tuesday, December 08, 2009

Hey if this will fly I say go for it. Not only will it achieve the long desired Democratic Party goal of expanding Medicare to those 55 and older, it will have an favorable immediate impact by providing a tangible easily understandable benefit to people that will help the Democrats at the polls in 2010. For God’s sake this is far better then any public option that been offered so far.

Besides a great number of other direct benefits one can think of with this proposed expansion of the Medicare program the one I, and my daughter, like is that it would allow many older folks to advance their retirements. It seems many American can’t afford to retire because they can’t afford the health insurance cost based on what their potential retirement income would be . With this new early Medicare buy in proposal that may change drastically. Think of the job vacancies created by a wave of retirements, but also by a boom in new jobs created to cater to a vast number of new retirees.

This is a political gold and those on the left who want real health care reform need to be open-mined about dumping the public option if the new Medicare proposal actually becomes viable. It’s not Medicare for all but it’s sure Medicare for a hell of a lot more people. Which maybe the closest thing to Medicare for all on the immediate horizon.

Tuesday, December 01, 2009

On one hand we have the right wing New York Post and on the other wing we have the more often then not predisposed Seattle police bashing SLOG. When comparing the two online headlines about the killing of suspected killer Maurice Clemmons I think you see evidence of the two extremes. The Post story paints a picture of good-riddance to bad rubbish and the SLOG story's tone is one of questioning whether the suspect's civil rights were violated.